Millburn dad was a spy

By Tonya Johnson

STAFF WRITER |

The Item of Millburn and Short Hills

Morris Tarnpoll, in a photograph taken in 1960.

The family of Morris Tarnpoll of Millburn — daughters Bonnie, left, and Judy, right, wife Grace and son Mike — arrives in Santiago, Chile, in February 1955 on a brief visit to Tarnpoll’s mysterious work world, unaware that he has a second family in Argentina.

Growing up in the township of Millburn-Short Hills during the 1950s through the early 1960s, sisters Judy and Barbara "Bonnie" Tarnpoll would laugh when their little brother Michael walked around the house telling them, "I think Dad is a spy."

Morris Tarnpoll spent long periods of time away from home. His tight-lipped demeanor among family and friends over casual dinner conversations about current events or world politics always seemed a bit unusual. Vague responses to gentle inquiries about his work life, travels and business relationships with co-workers at The M.W. Kellogg Company, just didn’t add up.

When Morris Tarnpoll wasn’t jetting off to another "business trip" in Latin America, and had a few moments of time to spare away from his desk stack of papers, Michael would corner him privately, politely, then put him on the spot. "Come on, Dad, you can tell me. Are you a spy?"

Morris Tarnpoll would never confirm or deny the answer to his son’s burning suspicions until he was long dead and gone.

It turned out that Michael was right.

In his memoir, "The Frequent Flier: The Secret Life of the 20th Century’s Most Enigmatic Man, Oil, the Cold War and the CIA," Michael Tarnpoll tells the story of his enigmatic father.

Tarnpoll said he never set out to write a book.

"My intention was to gather information so that my sisters and I would know the answers to the questions we’d always had," he told The Item of Millburn and Short Hills.

Morris Tarnpoll was in the thick of his Kellogg-CIA operations during the height of the 1960s, but it was only after his death that Michael Tarnopoll discovered the truth about his father’s secret career. Morris Tarnpoll had kept a ledger which listed every flight he ever took. There were more than 1,500 flights entered.

"When I first started realizing that there was more to this than meets the eye," Tarnpoll said, "I started correlating the places where he was, as listed in the flight log, with the events that were occurring in those places at those times and U.S. policy in those Latin American countries at that time. I started stumbling across aspects of his experiences that pertained to the Fluoride Conspiracy and the fact that he had worked on The Manhattan Project and was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services."

Tarnpoll recalls that he and his sisters would always say, "Every where dad goes there’s a revolution."

As the son dug deeper, his father’s secret life began to "emerge from the clutter."

When the CIA refused to give up classified information and Kellogg insisted that his father was never a staff employee, Tarnpoll was even more determined in his search for the truth. His father’s ledger helped him to begin to connect the dots.

Michael began to discover a whole world of things of which his family knew nothing about. For example, news photographs of Morris Tarnpoll posing with the President of Colombia.

"I saw that he was in Guatemala in the middle of 1954 and then I was able to find out that the President of the Republic of Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was ousted in 1954, while the United States government said they had no part in it," said Tarnpoll. "United States policy at the time was contrary to what President Arbenz was promoting in his country, so they clearly wanted him out.

"I got to the point where I’d say, I bet he was in Santiago, Chile in April of 1973, and sure enough, he was there." This at a time when political violence was on the rise against President Salvador Allende’s socialistic government.

"The book will appeal to history buffs and people who are interested in the history of the United States’ foreign policy towards South America," Tarnpoll told The Item. "People interested in the Cold War years, which is when most of this occurred, will also enjoy it. The conspiracy theorist will love to read about the international oil companies interfering with politics in South America, the United Fruit Company employing half the people in South America, or being owned by a man who was in charge of U.S. policy towards Latin America. The whole thing is insane, almost surreal."

The biggest secret of all, however, was the discovery that Morris Tarnpoll had a second family.

Nicknamed "The Frequent Flier," by this second family, the Iturbes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Morris Tarnpoll took great measures to keep his wife, two step daughters and a biological son, hidden from his family in Millburn for four decades. During an average year, he spent less than two or three months with the Iturbes, who knew even less about "The Frequent Flier" than the Tarnpolls did.

Morris Tarnpoll sacrificed a life full of meaningful relationships with both families to put his career first. He lived to regret it all in the end. The children yearned for a strong emotional connection with their father and his detachment from their everyday lives as they reached significant milestones, became all too normal.

Upset and disappointed at times by her husband’s physical and emotional absence from the family, Grace Tarnpoll was strong and content, but living in denial, her son recalls. She loved being a homemaker raising her children, and Morris Tarnpoll was an excellent provider.

"She had to have suspicions because she was an intelligent woman," Tarnpoll said. "He was away half of the time, but she never let those suspicions enter her reality. Her life did not include that. When he was away, he was just away. She never thought about what he was actually doing. None of us did. We didn’t know where he was staying,"

Many years later, Tarnpoll’s half brother, Enrique, communicated with him, telling his family’s side of the story.

"The softer side of the story is about a man who was forced by the circumstances in which he found himself to keep half of his life a secret from his family, while doing his best to maintain some semblance of a family life," Tarnpoll said. "It’s a really touching story."

Tarnpoll made the point that "the greatest lesson that Mike, Judy and Bonnie learned from their mother is that ‘You’re the one who decides what you’re going to make of your life.’ I don’t know how many women would have been able to live the way that she did under those circumstances, but she did it."

His sister Judy was the first valedictorian at the new Millburn High School in 1957. She currently resides in Northern California as an audiologist and speech therapist. Sister Bonnie still lives in New Jersey. She attended Michigan State and pursued a career as a music teacher. Both sisters attended American School in Latin American during a brief family peek inside of their dad’s life outside of their world.

Michael Tarnpoll is a Millburn High School graduate from the Class of 1965. Of the three Tarnpoll siblings, Michael is the only one who attended school in the Millburn-Short Hills School District for his entire K to 12 education. He also is the only sibling to have met his counterpart in South America. He married Harriet "Ri," formerly Harriet Elman, who he met in Kindergarten at South Mountain School.

Michael and "Ri" live in the Charlotte, N.C. area and operate a small writing service business. He is currently working on his second book, "Millburn Cab." The story about the Millburn Cab Company that operated out of the Erie Lackawanna Train station on Essex Street from the late 1950s through about 1975.

"It was a world within a world, an entire sub-culture that existed within the quintessential 1950s, 1960s perfect suburban upper middle class life of Millburn-Short Hills at that time."

The "Frequent Flier, released in 2011 by Barringer Publishing, is available for purchase at www.barringerpublishing.com or www.amazon.com for $15.95 in paperback edition. A Kindle version of the book is also available for $9.95.

Millburn dad was a spy

The family of Morris Tarnpoll of Millburn — daughters Bonnie, left, and Judy, right, wife Grace and son Mike — arrives in Santiago, Chile, in February 1955 on a brief visit to Tarnpoll’s mysterious work world, unaware that he has a second family in Argentina.

Growing up in the township of Millburn-Short Hills during the 1950s through the early 1960s, sisters Judy and Barbara "Bonnie" Tarnpoll would laugh when their little brother Michael walked around the house telling them, "I think Dad is a spy."

Morris Tarnpoll spent long periods of time away from home. His tight-lipped demeanor among family and friends over casual dinner conversations about current events or world politics always seemed a bit unusual. Vague responses to gentle inquiries about his work life, travels and business relationships with co-workers at The M.W. Kellogg Company, just didn’t add up.

When Morris Tarnpoll wasn’t jetting off to another "business trip" in Latin America, and had a few moments of time to spare away from his desk stack of papers, Michael would corner him privately, politely, then put him on the spot. "Come on, Dad, you can tell me. Are you a spy?"

Morris Tarnpoll would never confirm or deny the answer to his son’s burning suspicions until he was long dead and gone.

It turned out that Michael was right.

In his memoir, "The Frequent Flier: The Secret Life of the 20th Century’s Most Enigmatic Man, Oil, the Cold War and the CIA," Michael Tarnpoll tells the story of his enigmatic father.

Tarnpoll said he never set out to write a book.

"My intention was to gather information so that my sisters and I would know the answers to the questions we’d always had," he told The Item of Millburn and Short Hills.

Morris Tarnpoll was in the thick of his Kellogg-CIA operations during the height of the 1960s, but it was only after his death that Michael Tarnopoll discovered the truth about his father’s secret career. Morris Tarnpoll had kept a ledger which listed every flight he ever took. There were more than 1,500 flights entered.

"When I first started realizing that there was more to this than meets the eye," Tarnpoll said, "I started correlating the places where he was, as listed in the flight log, with the events that were occurring in those places at those times and U.S. policy in those Latin American countries at that time. I started stumbling across aspects of his experiences that pertained to the Fluoride Conspiracy and the fact that he had worked on The Manhattan Project and was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services."

Tarnpoll recalls that he and his sisters would always say, "Every where dad goes there’s a revolution."

As the son dug deeper, his father’s secret life began to "emerge from the clutter."

When the CIA refused to give up classified information and Kellogg insisted that his father was never a staff employee, Tarnpoll was even more determined in his search for the truth. His father’s ledger helped him to begin to connect the dots.

Michael began to discover a whole world of things of which his family knew nothing about. For example, news photographs of Morris Tarnpoll posing with the President of Colombia.

"I saw that he was in Guatemala in the middle of 1954 and then I was able to find out that the President of the Republic of Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was ousted in 1954, while the United States government said they had no part in it," said Tarnpoll. "United States policy at the time was contrary to what President Arbenz was promoting in his country, so they clearly wanted him out.

"I got to the point where I’d say, I bet he was in Santiago, Chile in April of 1973, and sure enough, he was there." This at a time when political violence was on the rise against President Salvador Allende’s socialistic government.

"The book will appeal to history buffs and people who are interested in the history of the United States’ foreign policy towards South America," Tarnpoll told The Item. "People interested in the Cold War years, which is when most of this occurred, will also enjoy it. The conspiracy theorist will love to read about the international oil companies interfering with politics in South America, the United Fruit Company employing half the people in South America, or being owned by a man who was in charge of U.S. policy towards Latin America. The whole thing is insane, almost surreal."

The biggest secret of all, however, was the discovery that Morris Tarnpoll had a second family.

Nicknamed "The Frequent Flier," by this second family, the Iturbes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Morris Tarnpoll took great measures to keep his wife, two step daughters and a biological son, hidden from his family in Millburn for four decades. During an average year, he spent less than two or three months with the Iturbes, who knew even less about "The Frequent Flier" than the Tarnpolls did.

Morris Tarnpoll sacrificed a life full of meaningful relationships with both families to put his career first. He lived to regret it all in the end. The children yearned for a strong emotional connection with their father and his detachment from their everyday lives as they reached significant milestones, became all too normal.